OTTAWA – So there were the Maple Leafs stealing Owen Nolan, that’s what everyone said, and there at the trade deadline were the Rangers pilfering Anson Carter and the Flyers emerging with Tony Amonte. And the Devils? Well, the Devils couldn’t get Teemu Selanne to wave his no-trade from San Jose and the Devils couldn’t pry Chris Drury out of Calgary, and when Mar. 11 had come and gone, people all around the league were shaking their heads and clucking their tongues at just how poorly Lou Lamoriello had done for his team, one that obviously needed a sniper on the wing to compete but could only add a plugger from Columbus named Grant Marshall.

Now, 10 weeks later, Nolan is home after being shut out in seven playoff games and Amonte is home after getting one goal in a dozen post-season matches. Carter is home after missing the tournament and so, similarly, are Selanne and Drury. Marshall? Four goals in 14 games for the Devils – including the triple OT Game 5 series-winner against Tampa Bay – and just one win shy of going to the Finals.

“I know when I got here that Lou and the coaching staff seemed pretty excited to have me, which was good because that’s how I felt about coming to New Jersey,” Marshall said following yesterday’s Game 5 morning skate. “I enjoyed the couple of years I had in Columbus, they’re good people there who treated to me well, but to have a chance to come to a playoff team, and one like the Devils, I was elated.”

The Devils added Marshall on Mar. 10 and they added Pascal Rheaume from Atlanta the following day, each at the cost of a conditional 2004 draft pick. Small deals lost in a flurry of big-name transactions, players coming to New Jersey almost as consolation prizes. But who needs consoling now? And who has the chance to win hockey’s grandest prize of all?

Marshall, who will turn 30 in two weeks, spent six seasons in Dallas before going to Columbus two summers ago. He won the Cup in 1999, then played on the squad that went down in six to the Devils in the following year’s Finals. Around New York, however, he’s probably best known as the Blue Jacket who took the draw against Krzysztof Oliwa in the Nov. 9 incident that led to Bryan Trottier’s two-game suspension.

“We all knew Oliwa was going to do something, and me being a veteran, I told the coaches I wanted to be out there to take the draw,” Marshall said yesterday. “It’s part of the game. But the thing I’m proudest of there is that I won the faceoff.”

Though he had played his entire career in the West, his move to the Devils was a reasonably easy adjustment.

“I think it’s a very similar situation in many ways to the one in Dallas,” Marshall said. “It’s a veteran team used to winning that’s had some ups and downs, and understands how to respond to adversity.

“It’s always been a well-coached team and it’s always been a well-run organization. Players around the league know that.”

Marshall opened the playoffs on the fourth line, but he’s played with Scott Gomez and Patrik Elias since the third game of the Boston series. His more famous and more offensively gifted linemates have combined for three goals – as many as he alone recorded against the Lightning. Marshall scored his fourth goal on Saturday, the Devils’ first in their 5-2 series-tilting Game 4 victory.

“However I can contribute, that’s what I’m here for,” Marshall, who never scored for Dallas in 59 playoff games. “I look at my job as creating time and space for my linemates. That’s not going to change.”

What has, however, changed is the perception of Lamoriello’s work at the deadline.